Pourquoi les industriels européens de l’aéronautique misent sur les secteurs de la défense et l’espace

On the same subject

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  April 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  The Air Force made a surprise decision to sole-source the Long Range Standoff Weapon. Here’s who will move forward.

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — In a surprise move, the Air Force on Friday announced plans to continue its Long Range Standoff Weapon program with Raytheon as the prime contractor. The LRSO program, which aims to field a new air-launched cruise missile capable of both nuclear and conventional strikes, is currently in its technology maturation and risk reduction phase, with both Raytheon and Lockheed Martin developing their own versions of the weapon. Typically, the Air Force would downselect to a single company in fiscal year 2022, when it awarded the engineering and manufacturing development contract that precedes low-rate production. However, the Air Force decided to press ahead with Raytheon's design after an “extensive evaluation” of the company's technology as presented during the preliminary design review, said Maj. Gen. Shaun Morris, who leads the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. “Our competitive TMRR phase, which included both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as the prime contractors, enabled us to select a high-confidence design at this point in the acquisition process,” he said, according to an Air Force release. “And this early off-ramp of a contractor is completely in line with the existing LRSO acquisition strategy, which included periodic reviews to assess contractor designs,” Morris said. “Lockheed Martin has been an excellent contractor and partner throughout the TMRR effort and this pivot to Raytheon does not represent a lack of effort or commitment on their part. Lockheed Martin has supported the nuclear enterprise for decades and we continue to value their expertise in sensors and nuclear certification and surety.” Elizabeth Thorn, the service's program manager, characterized the decision as “not a downselect, per se,” adding that the Air Force will continue to work with Lockheed on specific technologies that could drive down risk to the LRSO design or otherwise be beneficial to the program. The Air Force noted that the company had begun the “closeout process” to stop work on risk reduction phase of the program, leaving Lockheed's precise role in the LRSO program unclear. “We've supported our nation's nuclear triad for more than 60 years and look forward to working with the USAF to support the LRSO mission, specifically leveraging our sensor technology and nuclear certification and surety expertise,” Lockheed said in a statement. LRSO is set to replace the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile or ALCM, but the program has come under intermittent fire from lawmakers who believe that arming aircraft with a weapon that could be either nuclear or conventional could unnecessarily raise the risk of miscalculation, triggering a nuclear war. The Air Force has argued that it needs a nuclear missile that can be fired from standoff distances to enable the non-stealthy B-52 to remain a credible deterrent to adversaries with advanced air defense systems. Due to the decision to select Raytheon early, the Air Force wants to shift funding that will allow the company to begin certain work early, such as flight tests, the service said. A contract award for the next phase of the program is still scheduled for fiscal year 2022. Morris added that the service was also confident in its ability to keep the program affordable in a sole-source environment, despite the lack of competition that usually helps the government negotiate a lower-cost product. Roman Schweizer, a defense analyst with Cowen Washington Research Group, said the Air Force's announcement prompts additional questions about Lockheed's future role and the information both companies presented during the preliminary design view. “It's possible the USAF made an industrial base/cost decision based on other long-range weapons,” he wrote in an email to investors. “Singling up on LRSO could have been an industrial base decision or a way to reduce cost and speed up development.” In a statement, Raytheon noted that the company is on track to complete risk reduction efforts by January 2022. “LRSO will be a critical contributor to the air-launched portion of America's nuclear triad,” said Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Missiles and Defense. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/04/20/the-air-force-made-a-surprise-decision-to-sole-source-the-long-range-standoff-weapon-heres-who-will-move-forward/

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  May 1, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  DARPA Tests Advanced Chemical Sensors

  DARPA's SIGMA program, which began in 2014, has demonstrated a city-scale capability for detecting radiological and nuclear threats that is now being operationally deployed. DARPA is building off this work with the SIGMA+ initiative that is focused on providing city- to region-scale detection capabilities across the full chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive threat space. DARPA initiated a SIGMA+ pilot study last year known as ChemSIGMA to provide initial data and insights into how new chemical sensors using the existing SIGMA network would function. The chemical sensor package incorporates a chemical sensor, wind sensor and communications board into a weatherproof housing. Sensors report wind readings and real-time chemical information to a central cloud-hosted suite of fusion algorithms. “The algorithms were developed using a custom simulation engine that fuses multiple detector inputs,” said Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. “We built the algorithms based on simulant releases in a large metropolitan area – so we took existing data to build the algorithms for this network framework. With this network, we're able to use just the chemical sensor outputs and wind measurements to look at chemical threat dynamics in real time, how those chemical threats evolve over time, and threat concentration as it might move throughout an area.” In the pilot study, DARPA researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Physical Sciences Inc., and Two Six Labs, built a small network of chemical sensor packages. In partnership with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the Marion County Health Department, DARPA's performer teams deployed the network on-site at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late April 2018. The chemical sensor network and the data collected during events such as the 2018 Indianapolis 500 were critical to the DARPA effort, allowing the team to assess the performance of the sensors and network algorithms. These tests were conducted in an urban environment to ensure that the system could handle complex and stochastic signals from species that are ever present in a city's chemical background. Significantly, the network-level algorithm successfully improved system performance by correctly suppressing false detection events at the individual detector level. The group of DARPA researchers was also able to collect a large relevant data set and valuable user feedback that will guide ongoing system development efforts. Further testing with safe simulant/concert smoke at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, August 2018 During additional tests in August 2018, a non-hazardous chemical simulant was released in the empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway at a realistic threat rate. Concert fog was also released to serve as a visible tracer. The propagation of the visible tracer was observed in aerial photography, and ChemSIGMA sensors and algorithms determined the release location with unprecedented accuracy. The web-based ChemSIGMA interface allows the user to view alerts in real time across a variety of devices. Multiple trials were conducted over the course of several days assessing performance over a variety of meteorological conditions. Releases occurred during daytime and nighttime with a full range of wind directions and speeds. The ChemSIGMA prototype system detected all of the simulant releases and generated zero false alarms over the course of testing. Department of Defense simulant testing at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, October 2018 “We're looking at how we might make this network more robust and more mature,” Fischer said. “For example, we implemented a network at Dugway Proving Ground as part of a DoD test for simulant releases, and have shown that the network can respond to a number of chemical simulant threats different than those used in Indianapolis, as well as built-in capabilities for mobile releases. Over the past few months, the team has used these data sets to further refine the algorithms, and plans to integrate and test them with the ChemSIGMA system in test events scheduled later this year.” The successful pilot and simulant test of the ChemSIGMA system at the Indy500 and Dugway Proving Ground provided valuable, relevant, and realistic data sets for validation and verification of the source localization and plume propagation algorithms. DARPA is currently extending the capabilities for networked chemical detection by advancing additional sensor modalities, including short-range point sensors based on techniques, such as mass spectrometry, and long-range spectroscopic systems. As these systems are further developed and matured, they will be integrated into the SIGMA+ continuous, real-time, and scalable network architecture to increase the system's capabilities for city-scale monitoring of chemical and explosive threats and threat precursors. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-04-30

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  January 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  With this upgrade, these aircraft will have anti-jamming comms

  By: Nathan Strout The Air Force awarded Raytheon a $442 million contract Jan. 16 to develop new technology that will allow the B-52 and RC-130 aircraft to utilize the nation's advanced anti-jamming communications satellites. The contract is part of the Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T) program, an effort to replace legacy communication terminals with secure, nuclear-survivable terminals capable of utilizing the nation's most secure communications satellites for protected communications — including Presidential and National Voice Conferencing — and nuclear command and control. In 2015, the Department of Defense divided the FAB-T program into two segments: the Command Post Terminals (CPT) subprogram, which will provide terminals for ground posts and E-4 and E6 aircraft, and the Force Element Terminal (FET) subprogram, which will place new terminals in B-52 and RC-135 aircraft. The $442,265,464 cost-plus-incentive-fee undefinitized contract will provide for the latter, with Raytheon designing, developing, testing, integrating and providing logistical support for force element terminals for the two aircraft. Once in place, the terminals will allow airmen within those aircraft to utilize a trio of highly advanced satellites: the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites, the Enhanced Polar System satellites, and the legacy Milstar satellites. The FAB-T terminals will also allow command and control of those three constellations. According to the Government Accountability Office, the force element terminals are essential to the FAB-T program — without them, the program “cannot achieve its planned capabilities that are based on the interaction of bomber aircraft with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft and CPTs.” The GAO also reports that due to delays in the FAB-T program, all six AEHF satellites are expected to be on orbit before the system is in place, resulting in an underutilization of costly satellite capabilities. The same day, The FAB-T contracting office award Raytheon a $36,848,806 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract modification to develop a software encryption platform for the system approved by the National Security Administration. Work is expected to be completed by March 2023. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center also issued a Request for Information Jan. 15 seeking industry sources that can support the installation of the FAB-T Command Post Terminals worldwide. According to a May 2019 Government Accountability Office report, the CPT subprogram is expected to reach initial operating capability in June 2021 and full operational capability by March 2023. Raytheon is also the primary contractor for the CPT subprogram. Responses to that RFI are due Jan. 22. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/c2-comms/2020/01/21/with-this-upgrade-these-aircraft-will-have-anti-jamming-comms/